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Armenian participants in the upcoming Eurovision song contest are denying that their entry is about genocide denial. To ease concerns that the song violates competition rules by making a political statement, they have changed the title.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the mass slaughter of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks amid the tumult of the First World War. Armenia insists the killings amounted to genocide; Turkey does not accept that the tragedy constituted genocide.

The Armenian entry for the Eurovision contest was originally titled “Don’t Deny.” That title drew protests from Turkey, along with its close ally Azerbaijan. Austria is this year’s host for the Eurovision finals, which will take place in late May.

Eurovision’s rules require that contestants keep politics out of their acts. So to quash the controversy before it could gain traction, Armenia changed the title of its entry from “Don’t Deny” into “Face the Shadow.” The refrain “don’t deny” is still there.

The song’s producers insist that it is about peace, unity and tolerance, and about connecting to roots. Even so, the song is seen by many as a thinly veiled call for international recognition of 1915 mass slaughter as genocide. In the song’s recently released video, the members of the sextet called Genealogy pose for a photo in World War I period outfits and then vanish one by one.

Billionaire ex-Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, long annoyed by the alleged lack of “correct” current-affairs analysis in Georgia, has launched a daily TV talk-show as part of his ongoing campaign to shape public opinion about the government he brought to power.

Not surprisingly, he was the first guest.

Charging that his enemies’ propaganda dominates much of Georgian television, the 59-year-old Ivanishvili, who left power in 2013, observed that “it is difficult for people to understand what is happening in reality.”

Called 2030, in honor of the year when Ivanishvili expects European-style democracy and wealth to hit Georgia, the 90-minute talkathon is intended as a counterweight to the country’s most popular TV channel, Rustavi2, a station Ivanishvili terms a “machine of lies” run by ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili and his cohort.

“It is about doing the right analysis,” said Ivanishvili, getting on his favorite soap box. He promised to use the 2030 show and an eponymous NGO to produce a new cadre of wonks to tell Georgians what’s really going on in the country.

Of course, one can’t be too careful when choosing the means for delivering such information. The ex-PM has selected GDS, an MTV-style station owned by his rapper son, Bera — an individual he presumably believes also capable of making the “right” analyses.

Ivanishvili opted against the original idea to co-host the show, but he will make frequent appearances to deliver — if the premiere is any indication — lengthy, didactic lectures as host and co-panelists nod approvingly.

Armenia plans to use Eurovision, the pop-and-politics fest extraordinaire, to ask Europe not to “deny” that the slaughter of thousands of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey amounted to genocide.

The Armenian entry for Eurovision, “Don’t Deny,” has not formally been linked to many countries’ – most notably, Turkey’s – reluctance to admit that the slaying amounted to genocide. But in the song’s video, presented on March 12, the subtext is fairly obvious.

The performers, a sextet called Genealogy, are made up of five ethnic Armenian artists (from Australia, Ethiopia, France, Japan and the US), reportedly all descendants of survivors of the 1915 massacre, and a singer from Armenia.

The group, mostly kitted out in contemporary renditions of early 20th-century outfits, sing amidst retro-shots of an extended World-War-I-era family. The family ultimately vanishes, leaving empty chairs behind.

Armenian Weekly claimed that each singer in the collective stands for a petal of the forget-me-not flower, the symbol chosen for the April 24 genocide-centennial in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. The publication claimed that Armenian singer Inga Arshakian represents the midpoint of the flower — the center of gravity, if you will — for the far-flung Armenian Diaspora.

The centennial’s official commemoration date hits roughly a month before Eurovision’s May 19-23 run in Vienna.

Reports about Vladimir Putin’s death might be slightly exaggerated, but they have kept Internet-users entertained for two days now. Yet, as journalists go chasing the vanished Russian president, perhaps someone needs to talk to his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, who insisted that he spoke to Putin over the phone just yesterday.

According to the Armenian president’s office, Putin told Sargsyan he was planning to come visit Yerevan on April 24 for Armenia’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the massive slaughter of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.

If the chat did take place, Sargsyan may be the last leader to have spoken to Putin. A trip to Kazakhstan was canceled, as was a meeting with a delegation from breakaway South Ossetia.

Armenia ranks as Russia's main ally in the South Caucasus, so, presumably, Sargsyan would know when he's talking to Putin himself.

But how did Putin sound to the Armenian leader? For now, Sargsyan's office ain't sayin'.

The chat, though, is likely to feed the fire of speculation since Putin disappeared from public view after late last week. What began as a “have you seen Putin?” whisper is turning into a wildly trending “Putin died” phenomenon that some take seriously and others as a total joke. Even an oracular website has been set up to let users ask if Putin is dead or not.

March 11 was supposed to be a big day for South Ossetia, the tiny breakaway region with a wish to become one with Russia. A South Ossetian delegation had arrived in Moscow with an engagement ring — the so-called Treaty on Alliance and Integration — but Russia was just not ready to commit. Perhaps because it has too much going on in its life right now.

The main battleground for the 2008 Georgian-Russian war, South Ossetia never made a secret of its desire to become the next Crimea. Its leadership had left for the signing-ceremony in Moscow to much fanfare at home and teeth-grinding in jilted Tbilisi, which claims the mountainous border region as its own.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin did not even receive the delegation, much less sign the agreement meant to merge the Russian and South Ossetian economies and government agencies.

Russian media was awash with speculation: Putin had a running nose or thinks the territory did a sloppy job with the agreement or is bogged down in Ukraine and does not feel like adding another region to his land-grab collection right now. “Indefinite postponement of such a document’s signing on the eve of an event is an unprecedented development,” wrote Russia’s Vzglyad newspaper.

Iran has assailed Georgia, in particular Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani, for not being neighborly. Tehran’s burst of criticism came in response to recent comments by Tsulukiani that were seen as disparaging of Iran and Iranians.

Tsulukiani sparked the diplomatic spat on March 9, expressing approval in a television interview of changes to immigration procedures that have prevented thousands of potential Chinese, Iranian, Iraqi and Egyptian visitors from entering the country. Tsulukiani also said that in the future Georgia would only allow “well-wishers” to enter the country, prompting rights activists and the Iranian embassy to assume that Iranians were not regarded among the country’s well-wishers.

An Iranian government press release described the justice minister’s comments as “incompetent and ignorant.”

“The restrictions placed upon Iranian investors and tourists can be regarded as Georgia’s loss of Iranian friends’ skills, capital and valuable services,” the statement added.

The Georgian minister met with the Islamic Republic’s Ambassador Abbas Talebifar on March 10. After the meeting, Tsulukiani put down the incident to miscommunication and claimed that Iranian-Georgian friendship is as strong as ever.

The government insists that tightening immigration rules for Iranians and other nationals was required under an association agreement that Georgia signed with the European Union in 2014. However, some observers suspect that authorities had an additional motive for strengthening procedures: to pander to conservative, anti-immigrant voters.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has not just dealt his deepest-pocketed rival, Gagik Tsarukian, a political knockout. Some now claim that, with the beefy tycoon's formal withdrawal from politics, Sargsyan has left punch-drunk arguably the most combat-capable part of Armenia’s opposition camp.

As members of Tsarukian's Prosperous Armenia Party start to drift away, the party, the country's largest legislative minority, is being forced to reinvent itself. The question is whether and how it can.

Don't expect Tsarukian to offer any public tips, however. “Henceforth, please do not bother me with any questions related to politics,” he said in a March 5 adieu to his party.

Coming on the heels of his threats to take to the streets with ex-President Levon Ter Petrossian, another Sargsyan-foe, to force early elections, it might seem some sort of detailed elaboration is required.

It hasn't happened. In fact, public disappointment over Tsarukian’s backdown, some observers believe, could mean that Prosperous Armenia does not have much of a future.

For years, Georgia has been notorious for its widespread use of pirated software. But now officials in Tbilisi are vowing to address the issue, pledging in a memorandum signed with software giant Microsoft to use only properly licensed products.

“It is no secret that Georgia for years relied on unauthorized software. We can say that Georgia had the highest rate of counterfeit software usage in the world,” Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili said during the March 5 signing ceremony.

Georgia was cited as the largest user of bootlegged software in a 2009 study that covered 115 nations. A 2014 study showed that the country had made little progress in stemming the problem, with roughly 90 percent of the software installed by computer users not being properly licensed.

Some observers contend that the widespread reliance on pirated software makes Georgia vulnerable to cyber-attacks. During the country’s 2008 war with Russia, Georgia suffered from massive cyber sabotage at the hands of Russian hackers.

US Ambassador to Georgia Richard Norland, who attended the signing ceremony, said the agreement sends a powerful message that “Georgia wants to do business in the right way, in accordance with the rule of law, respecting intellectual property,” the Interpressnews newswire reported.

The leader of Russia-backed South Ossetia worries that Georgian doctors are undermining the breakaway entity’s health.

During a cabinet session of the de-facto South Ossetian government held March 2, Leonid Tibilov, the president of the self-proclaimed republic, expressed concern about the number of South Ossetian residents traveling to Georgia to seek medical treatment.

South Ossetia, along with the autonomous region of Abkhazia, broke free of Tbilisi’s rule in the early 1990s. In the aftermath of its 2008 war with Georgia, Russia recognized the independence of both entities, which remain heavily dependent on Kremlin subsidies.

Despite decades of political enmity, many South Ossetians prefer Georgian health services to what they can obtain at home, and they find Georgian healthcare to be cheaper than what can be found in Russia. Many are attracted by Georgia’s universal insurance program, which covers residents of the separatist regions. Official policy in Tbilisi holds that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are still part of Georgia.

South Ossetian authorities permit residents to make trips across the breakaway lines only in cases of a healthcare emergency, but, as Tibilov observed a year ago, a growing number of South Ossetians are opting for regular treatment in Georgian clinics. Georgian officials said that the number reached 400 last year, reported Ekho Kavkaza news service. The fraternization makes South Ossetian leaders uncomfortable.

About Tamada Tales

Countries throughout Eurasia lay claim to the tamada (toastmaster) tradition, but in few places is the role of tamada as celebrated -- or as formalized -- as in the South Caucasus. It requires a keen sense of timing and of presentation; a sense of humor as well as of tragedy, and an ability to draw forth an audience with words that stir the emotions. It is not just about making toasts. Rather, it is the ultimate piece of interactive theater. In a region known for its endless news dramas, EurasiaNet's news tamada will help readers make sense of them all.

About The Author

Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance reporter for EurasiaNet.org who lives in Tbilisi, an ancient stronghold of the tamada tradition. He has a lifetime of experience both attending tamada-hosted supras (traditional Georgian feasts) and acting as tamada.

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